José de Acosta Lecture Series

The José de Acosta lecture series was initiated through the generous donation of USF Alumna and Board of Trustees member Michelle Skaff and her husband Dan.

José de Acosta was a sixteenth-century Jesuit scientist who, nearly 300 years before Charles Darwin's work on natural selection, studied natural history issues in South America. He based his work on meticulous observation and keen insight and wrote extensively on wildlife, atmospheric science, oceanography, and anthropology.

Past Highlights

The Hawaiian Islands as a Model for Human–Environment Interactions Dr. Peter Vitousek

Peter Vitousek is the Clifford G. Morrison Professor of Population and Resource Studies in the Department of Biology at Stanford University. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was awarded the 2010 Japan Prize. He is director of the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources and co-director of the First Nations Futures Institute.

Dr. Vitousek presented his work on the Hawaiian Islands as a model for human-environment interactions. His research interests include: evaluating the global cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus, and how they are altered by human activity; supporting agronomists in China in their development of high-yielding but low-impact cropping systems; determining the effects of invasive species on the workings of whole ecosystems; understanding how the interaction of land and culture contributed to the sustainability of Hawaiian society before European contact; and more generally using the extraordinary ecosystems of Hawai`i as models for understanding how the world works.

Harmonizing People and Nature: A New Business Model Dr. Gretchen Daily

Gretchen Daily is the Bing Professor of Environmental Science in the Department of Biology at Stanford University. She is also a Senior Fellow in the Woods Institute for the Environment, and Director of the Center for Conservation Biology. She is Co-Director of The Natural Capital Project, a partnership among Stanford University, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and the University of Minnesota, whose goal is to align economic forces with conservation.

Even in the face of intensifying pressures and risks on the global environmental front, there is a growing feeling of Renaissance in the conservation community. This flows from the promise in reaching, together with a much more diverse and powerful set of leaders than in the past, for new approaches that align economic forces with nature conservation, and that explicitly link human and environmental well-being. Around the world, leaders are increasingly recognizing ecosystems as natural capital assets that supply life-support services of tremendous value.

The challenge is to turn this recognition into incentives and institutions that will guide wise investments in natural capital, on a large scale. Gretchen Daily will discuss the advances being made on two key fronts. The first is the development of new science and tools for valuing Nature, such as InVEST, a software system developed by the Natural Capital Project for Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs. The second advance is in new policies and finance mechanisms being implemented worldwide, with examples from China, Latin America, and the United States.

The Biggest Bubble: Avoiding Ecological Collapse Dr. Denis Hayes

Denis Hayes is president of the Bullitt Foundation and chairman of the board of trustees of the American Solar Energy Society. He was national coordinator of the first Earth Day in 1970, and he served as the director of the federal Solar Energy Research Institute during the Carter administration. Photo by Robert Stone.

Hayes argues that the biggest bubble - encompassing the entire global economy - is an ecological bubble. We are liquidating the Earth's natural capital and not reflecting this on our books. Hayes will propose several sensible policies that, if adopted, could deflate this international bubble before it leads to a catastrophic collapse.

Innovations for a Low-Carbon Society Dr. Daniel Kammen

Daniel Kammen is a Professor in both the Goldman School of Public Policy and the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, where he co-directs the Institute of the Environment and serves as the Founding Director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory.

What will it take to make the transition to a low-carbon society? In the aftermath of the Copenhagen Climate summit it is imperative that ecologically, economically, and socially effective strategies move into widespread use. This talk will examine both scientific/technical and political/economic opportunities to put this low-carbon economy into practice and into the marketplace of not only ideas, but of business. This talk will explore what rates of innovation and change can meet ‘Nature’s mandate.’

The Future of Water: Finding a Path to Sustainability Dr. Peter Gleick

Dr. Gleick is co-founder and president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security in Oakland, California. His research and writing address the critical connections between water and human health, the hydrologic impacts of climate change, sustainable water use, privatization and globalization, and international conflicts over water resources.

Dr. Stephen Schneider (now deceased) was the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford University, as well as a Professor of Biological Science and a Senior Fellow in the Woods Institute of the Environment. Dr. Schneider received numerous awards for his scientific research and his ability to integrated and explain the results of climate change research to the broader public.

Evaluating the consequences of climate change outcomes to determine those that may be considered "dangerous" is a complex undertaking, involving substantial uncertainties as well as value judgments. For an efficient functioning of a democracy the electorate needs to understand the trade-offs between the use of limited resources for economic development on the one hand and protecting the sustainability of our environmental assets on the other hand. Probabilistic estimation is an important method to treat such uncertainties. This task inevitably involves a mix of objective and subjective probability measures. What integrated assessment modeling can do to help explicate this important interdisciplinary scientific and political question is an issue that will be explored in this lecture.